Curried Apple Couscous
Recipe

This curried apple couscous recipe makes for a wonderfully filling meal. I'm trying to finish up the very last photos for my cookbook. It's a great feeling and a huge sense of - I'm not exactly sure what - relief, accomplishment, excitement? When it is completely done, I'll be looking at close to one hundred recipes with corresponding photos for a good percentage them. I feel like a kid on the last day of school looking forward to a fun, light-hearted summer break. Almost.

The manuscript is out of my hands, but I still have all the photography. A year-plus worth of photography and you can only imagine the worry this can cause. So I've been obsessively burning discs of the images and then squirreling them away in random offsite locations in case something catastrophic happens to the house. A news chopper falling from the sky or something.

So I need to get back to work, but in the meantime I thought I'd do a quick post about the whole wheat curried apple couscous recipe I made for lunch.

When I surveyed the kitchen, I was able to find a nice selection of ingredients that I thought might work together for what I had in mind. Couscous (often mistaken for a grain, but really a pasta), apples, curry powder, butter, mint, and green onions. I heated the butter, tossed in a good dose of a stunning Marrakech curry powder Pim brought me from Paris, and then sauteed the chopped apples in the fragrant buttery goodness for a few minutes. These curried apples are delicious and I'm already thing of other ways to use them.

This was an on-the-fly lunch that I was trying to pull off in under 10 minutes, so I used the quick-cook method instead of steaming. I feel a bit guilty every time I do it this way, (sorry Paula!). Toss everything together and you've got yourself a meal. Couldn't be simpler, and the perfume of the spices permeates your home for the rest of the day.

In a large saucepan over medium-high heat add 3 tablespoons of the butter, the curry powder, and a couple generous pinches of salt, and cook for a minute or until the spices are fragrant. Stir in the chopped apples and cook for about 3 minutes, enough time for the apples to soften up a bit and absorb some of the curry. Scoop the apples from the pan and set aside in a separate bowl.

In the same pan, again over medium-high heat, add the remaining tablespoon of butter. Stir in the green onions, let them soften up a bit and then add the water and salt. Bring to a boil, stir in the couscous, cover and remove from heat. Steam for 5 to 10 minutes and then use a fork to fluff up the couscous. Stir in the apples, pine nuts, and chopped mint. Season with more salt and curry powder to taste.

Ahh .. couscous a pasta? who would've thought .. its like the whole "pumpkin is a veggie" thing whereas it is a fruit ..... what a relief it must be for u getting towards the end of a massive project :). I make Fruit Chicken Curry in a similar way ... with apples, pears and chicken, its quite yum!

October 4, 2006

baguette about it

i added golden raisins to this as well...delicious!

October 4, 2006

jigi

'so I used the quick-cook method instead of steaming'

whats the steaming method?

October 4, 2006

weeb

can't wait to try this tonight! mmmm thanks!

October 4, 2006

kasey

My first thought was you could use pears instead of the apples--it is just becoming pear season anyway. My second thought was that bulgar wheat might also work well for this dish, though it takes a little bit longer to cook than couscous. Can't wait to try it!

October 4, 2006

lakshmi

We could also use broken red wheat instead of the couscous and also add a bit of grated carrots to make it more child friendly.

I made (a version of) this last night. I added carrots and some veggie (fake) chicken, subsituted leeks for green onions, left out the mint (didn't have any), and sauteed everything together in one pot, adding the couscous and broth to the mixture to steam. I sauteed the fake chicken and pine nuts separately and added them at the end. This was excellent, and so incredibly quick. I will be making it often.

October 5, 2006

Lauren K.

I'm so happy for you! I love your first book. It's so inspirational. I can't wait to check out the new one.

Here's a link to the wikipedia page on couscous: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Couscous
also, check out egullet.com for couscous. I suspect you'll find a few posts about people making couscous from scratch and using a couscousierre to steam it.

I am thinking of how to adapt this to try and cut down the prep time, but it sounds like my whole family will love it.

October 8, 2006

Maria Luz

love the couscous with apples.
they get very well together the apples and the curry.
Maria
mlpcoco@gmail.com

October 8, 2006

Sanjeev

I'm not strictly vegetarian, but I can vouch for the terrific mellowing effect of any gourdi vegetable or (preferably) citrus fruit when combined with a rich (non-veg) curry. Curry Powder Does Not Count As Curry!

October 9, 2006

Maobita

Cous cous is made of durum wheat, by consecuence makes it a grain.

October 9, 2006

Jeff

By that rationale, spaghetti is also a grain. See the point? Sure, couscous contains> grain, but it is often misconceived as something that grows on stalks like wheat, because of its shape and size.